This section introduces aspects that may be helpful in facilitating a better understanding of the invention. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
During the last few years, social networking has become one of the main ways of communicating between people. Social networking and/or social networks are intended to be interpreted broadly and to be defined as a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called for example, “nodes”, which can be tied (e.g., connected) by one or more specific types of interdependencies, such as, friendship, kinship, common interests, financial exchanges, dislikes, likes, relationships of beliefs, knowledge, prestige, etc. Web-based social networking services, for example, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Xing, etc., make it possible to connect people who share interests and activities across political, economic, and geographic borders. Social networks (hereinafter including web-based social networks) provide a new way for individuals to communicate digitally.
However, the vast majority of social networking users today feel insecure, knowing that the information that they share over a social network can be misused by social network operators, for example, cloud operators acting as social network hosts. This is especially the case with enterprise users and customers, which can share confidential, high-value enterprise information using social networks that are hosted in the cloud, i.e., beyond the authority of enterprise IT departments.